Never Ending Comic Party
Reading about doujinshi in the form of Inui’s Comic Party manga is something I should have done years ago, but only because I didn’t opt for either the game(s) or the anime (dropped after 6?). In some sense, Comic Party is a good attempt to map the macrocosm of fandom into the context of something more applicable, something tangible.
By applicable and tangible, I mean that it really doesn’t mean very much on a practical basis to say you love anime or manga or really want to love Sakura Kinomoto for a long time or you are really gay for Archer. It does, once you act on it by making 18+ pictures of her and posting it on Pixiv or write some super long blog post about what GAR means in your personal context and fandom. It doesn’t mean much if you download anime and watch it, but it does mean a lot more if you download anime, watch it, and then proceed to do something productive. (Coincidentally, buying anime is automatically slightly more productive than getting it for free!)
By macrocosm, I mean that as within any human society, people do things based on varied motivations; and often multiple motivations, at the same time, drive a singular human act. It’s one thing if you draw doujinshi for an audience of one, versus over nine thousand. It’s another to draw as an expressive outlet for pent-up creative energies, versus as a means to hone your skills. These motivations exhibit in different behaviors. What’s more, some of these behaviors can contradict.
I mention this, because the simple and obvious epiphany I had while reading Comipa is that the anime blog scene is slowly transforming into something like a comic market (as parodied in Comipa at least). No longer restrained by space and time, it’s much like an anime convention panel that runs on forever. We are many, we are /a/ and /b/ and more alphabets than the colors of the rainbow. We are twitter’s failwhalers and MAL’s elitists and people who have nothing to do. We make AMVs and write articles for online encyclopedias. We make pointless online polls about moe. We even have pros moving into this space. You get the idea.
I like to quote the author of Japanamerica for saying that American fans party, but don’t pay, and only to follow up and counter that American fans do pay, but just not to Japan. Someone better versed with Japanese fan practices can probably even say that Japan don’t pay either, when they party. Comic Party manga, if it is any indication, suggests as much–you got fans that spend their time and money on making cosplay or doujinshi, but I don’t see them buy DVDs of anime they draw from. If Japan truly pays (or I should say, have a culture of paying for anime they can watch off TV) there’s just no way they can get away with the prices they charge on their home video releases.
But more importantly, from the fan perspective, fandom is merely a platform, a cause for unity, and a stage upon which we express ourselves. The potential problem is that what we do as fans seems to be in disconnect with creators–and this is beyond a physical sense, of money changing hands. For example, writing this blog post probably has no impact with Sekihiko Inui or Leaf. But it’s more than that. A random blogging guy has the freedom to say more or less whatever he wishes, but is it really productive? I think the Comic Party manga addresses this question much better than I can.
There is purity in a union through agreement upon ideals. Ideas that resonate among us act like glue to bring fans to fans, creators to subsequent creators, creations to willing buyers, and so much more. The Comipa manga, perhaps unsurprisingly, focuses on this notion as seen through the protagonist. It even idolizes this honest, pure feeling by making the girls around the protagonist react emotionally positively towards the protagonist because of his feelings about doujinshi. And of course, doujinshi is just one way fans do their things. It could be blogging or fanfiction or whatever (a sizable quantity of doujinshi is just text, after all).
At the end of Comic Party manga we see a transformation of our doujinshi slinger [I suppose this is a spoiler, but it’s a dumb spoiler so you’ll just have to excuse me while I go ahead] from a directionless college bum into a pro. The editor of the publisher coached him to display, through his manga, the same passion that she saw in his doujinshi as an expression of his own emotions. Is this what fans are after? Is this what motivated us to squander our youths in this particular manner? Or make career moves based on pure passion? Perhaps?
And it isn’t to say honesty is the best policy, or the only one you need. The different characters in Comic Party show you different sides and perspectives in which your own goals drive the feeling you want to express. It is only with so much vested human emotions that obstacles like needless drama and people resorting to hateful or dirty acts, driven by hurt feelings, can exist. It’s hard to hate what you don’t really care about, and Comipa deals with this, too. What’s more, this outpouring of honest emotion needs a focus. It might be that you only want to reach out to a narrow segment of like-minded fans. It might be that you only want to draw really hawt p0n0s. It might be that you only want to make a good joke. Who knows? But single-minded, whole-hearted devotion to whatever expressive end bears a fruit like no other. And you don’t even have to go to that extreme to accomplish your goals.
But with all that’s said and done, I hope none of you reading my post get away with the notion that Comic Party is a good manga. It is an honest manga that is sugar-coated with idealism. However I believe it doesn’t really care for those who don’t understand the ideals it expresses, because it isn’t about people off the stage of fandom, but to those who are trying to create something. Those who have tried to create something in response to their inner fan might just agree with something within its pages.
This is the reason I like the Megatokyo Anime, Manga, and Cosplay forum’s Annual Grand Prix.
It gives me a chance (and, probably more important, a deadline!) to produce